The Walnut Tree Inn
ELIZABETH David rarely gives inter- views. One would even have said that she never gives interviews, except that last year she gave in to the cameras and allowed Jancis Robinson and a hungry film crew to visit her. The location she chose — acco- lade of accolade — was the Walnut Tree Inn in Abergavenny. Franco Taruschio came over here from Ancona in 1960 to learn English, met Ann, married her and stayed. In 1963, using all but 3/9d of their savings, they opened the Walnut Tree and the place has stayed much the same since: a modestly done-up Pub serving excellent food. In the summer you can sit outside, on ironwork chairs coated in thick white paint. If you ignore the car park which provides the immediate vista, beyond are greenly curving hills. In the evening a small dining room is open, with tables covered in cloths the colour of melting coffee ice-cream. The recent canonisation of British-based chefs has included Taruschio, although his cooking is unsullied by the curlicues of fashionable culinary art: 'In Wales,' he said, 'they like their food to be food.' Having eaten elsewhere in Wales, I wouldn't set that much store by just what sort of food they like it to be, but since the place is not entirely populated by Hereford types in primrose V-necks but also by locals dropping in for a glass of beer and a Plate of lasagne, it is obvious his faith in the Welsh appetite for something better than they are used to is well-founded.
And what lasagne it is: slippery fresh Pasta bubbling with garlic-scented ragout and besciamella aromatic with nutmeg. The English experience had all but given me a life-long antipathy to this most travestied of Italian dishes. Here's the Place to be put right: the ratio of meat to Pasta is greater than you'd find in Italy, for Taruschio uncomplainingly defers to re- gional tastes, but otherwise here is the dish restored to authentic greatness. They did take it off the menu once, but the outcry was so ferocious that it was put hastily back on, where it has remained ever since.
Bresaola comes, pomegranate red, lying like folds of silk on the plate. They make it themselves here, having secured the recipe from a little restaurant in the Jewish quarter of Rome: salt beef, marinated in red and white wine, orange peel and herbs culled from the garden, and hung till dry and ready for the slicer. A good chef knows to make the most of local ingredients. And Welsh lamb, says Taruschio, 'is the best I've ever tasted in my life'. Here it comes as a softly cooked cart* topped with garlic-soused bread- crumbs speckled with parsley, tarragon and chervil, in a wine-dark reduction with artichokes and polenta.
If you think it's getting a bit hot for red meat at the moment, try the fish: sea bass, the delicate scent of its compact white flesh spiked with, but not submerged under, shards of fresh ginger. Salads come with a perfect dressing, nuttily oily but not heavy, unastringently fresh. I failed at the third course — I just couldn't, after the bulging portions that had come before, even contemplate a pudding. But looking at the menu, and at amber-speckled praline ice-cream and mounds of chocolate on other people's plates, I wished for a bigger appetite, or for another visit.
There's a good strong Italian wine list, but Abergavenny is a long drive away, so I stuck to spritze. Service is brisk, not exactly unfriendly, though decidedly cool- er to non-regulars. You can't book for lunch, so get there early to be sure of a table.
The Walnut Tree Inn: Llandewi Skirrid, Abergavenny, Gwent; tel: 0873 2797. Ask for directions when you phone.
(While you're still with me, I have a favour to ask: I need an extremely part- time secretary. Someone who can trans- cribe the odd tape, deal with correspond- ence, keep an eye on the books and generally keep me from sinking in a sea of notes scribbled on scraps of paper. Compu- ter literacy isn't essential, but might help. I can't imagine that it will take more than half a day a week. If you're interested please write to the me at The Spectator, or fax me at 081 960 6754.)
Nigella Lawson
Uh oh — head hunters.'
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